Business: Pay
Proximity Pay   (+1)  [vote for, against]
get more wages based on close contact with your work

Often the ebb and flow of work is such that there is more of a call and response over the entire 24 hours rather than a certain eight hour block where one is going full steam. Proximity pay gives you a certain amount of money for minimizing the gaps between fulfilling your boss's obligations.

This particularly comes in handy for technical employees. For example you might be dealing with hiring out installation of an SSL certificate where there are many points where one has to give 3 minutes of their productivity but at various times of the day when the installer asks you for more information.

People lament the fact that we're on call all the time but we might as well find a compensation scheme that rewards it. Hourly wages don't (as replying to e-mails are often only five minutes or less) and a fixed salary just assumes you'll always be on call.

It would take people above my pay grade to work out the implementation of this. You would be rewarded for not having too big of a gap of contact with your work. It could work that you got extra pay per e-mail reply but I see bosses just writing one e-mail with like 15 things to do. Any scheme employers will learn to exploit to their advantage so (like an anti virus with updating malware definitions) it would have to be one that changes dynamically over time.
-- lepton, Sep 28 2016

Unless I misunderstood, I think this might be called piecework. One risk is "line speedups", then again I read a researcher writing about "flow" as happiness who found a few people that optimized their pacing to feel good.

Also, it might be unpopular with those below the median of rapid responsiveness.

IT piecework sounds like a troubleshooting call center, there could be unintentional user rudeness issues.

other than that, keep writing up ideas here!
-- beanangel, Sep 28 2016


You can be sure they're charging you for the time spent making inquiries in dribs and drabs: the "organic" approach to systems implementation; all shifting targets and agile accounting.
-- FlyingToaster, Sep 29 2016



random, halfbakery